This invention relates to an intake and exhaust system for use in rotary engines.
There is a continuing interest in finding practical alternatives to the standard reciprocating internal combustion engines and much of this interest has been centered on rotary engine research and development. Various types of rotary engines have been proposed including engines which depart from the conventional cylinder/piston arrangement, such as the well known Wankel engine, and engines which utilize a cylinder/piston arrangement in an unconventional way, such as the engine disclosed in A. Z. Richards, Jr., U.S. Pat. No. 2,683,422. The Richards-type engine includes a cylinder block having a plurality of cylinders arranged generally radially about an axis about which the block rotates. Pistons are disposed to move within the cylinders and to rotate about a second axis offset from the first mentioned axis.
One of the difficulties of producing a practical Richards-type engine is the problem of introducing fuel and air into the cylinders of the cylinder block and withdrawing exhaust gases therefrom as the cylinder block rotates. The typical cam and valve structure used in standard reciprocating engines is simply not suitable for use in the Richards-type engine because of the rotating cylinder block. Suggestions have been made for eliminating valves altogether and for providing instead some type of structure in which fuel and air is supplied to the cylinders through openings in the cylinder walls and exhaust gases are withdrawn from the cylinders through the same or other openings in the cylinder walls. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,623,296 and 3,730,148. In the latter patent, openings in the cylinder walls of a rotating cylinder block alternatively move into alignment first with stationary inlet openings and then with stationary outlet openings to respectively receive fuel charges and then discharge products of combustion. Although fuel charges and exhaust gases may respectively be adequately supplied to and withdrawn from the cylinders, it is difficult to obtain a low friction seal structure which will adequately seal the cylinder openings to prevent loss of power during combustion in the cylinders.